Trust & data

How Viewpoint moderates uploaded photos

Updated 2026-08-16

How Viewpoint moderates uploaded photos

Viewpoint’s public sharing surface lets you make a Location visible to other photographers on the map — the map in the Conditions tab. Anything that’s visible to other people goes through a small set of safety checks first. This page covers what those checks do, how to report content you’ve seen, and how to hide individual Locations from your own browse.

What gets checked, and when

Photos uploaded to Viewpoint’s servers are scanned by an automated content classifier before they can appear on anyone else’s map. The classifier is trained to spot adult and explicit imagery — the category that has no place in a general-audience photography app. It gives every photo a score, and a photo scoring above the cutoff is held back from public surfaces.

It is one model doing one job, not a general-purpose filter for everything objectionable. Content that’s wrong for other reasons — a misleading location, harassment, someone else’s photograph — is caught by the reporting flow below, not by the classifier.

The scan runs on upload, not on publish. It happens in the background as soon as a photo reaches our servers, which means it also covers photos you never make public — the check has to have already run by the time you decide to publish.

The scan runs on our own servers. The model that reads your photograph sits on the same machine the photo is stored on; the image is not sent to any outside company for it, and nothing about it leaves our infrastructure. That was not always true — an earlier version of this page said the check was performed by an outside machine-learning provider, and the privacy policy named them. It no longer does, because there is no longer anyone to name.

Until the scan completes:

  • You see your own photo immediately in your own library. The scan is about what other people see, never about what you see.
  • Other Viewpoint users don’t see the Location’s photo yet. The Location’s pin appears on the map, but the photo placeholder shows until the scan clears.
  • The lag is usually under a minute. If the scan is taking unusually long, check back — most clears within seconds.

If the classifier flags a photo, it’s kept out of public surfaces but stays in your library. You can replace it from the Location’s detail screen. We don’t delete your file; the rejection only affects whether it appears to other users.

Reporting content you’ve seen

If you see a public Location or photo on the Map that you think shouldn’t be there — illegal, misleading location, spam, harassment, copyrighted material — long-press the public pin and pick Report this Location. The sheet that opens asks you to pick a reason and lets you add a short note explaining what’s wrong.

What happens after you report:

  • The report lands in a small queue that a human reviews. There’s no automated punishment — every action against a Location or its uploader is taken by a person.
  • The uploader is not told who reported, only that a report exists once a moderator decides to act on it.
  • You can only have one open report against the same Location at a time. If a moderator acts on it (in either direction — keeping it up or taking it down), you can report it again if it reappears.
  • If many people independently report the same Location, it can be temporarily hidden from the public Map while we look at it. We restore it if the reports turn out to be wrong.

What happens when many users report a Location

When a public Location accumulates reports from several different people, Viewpoint temporarily takes it off the public Map while a moderator reviews. The threshold is intentionally small — it doesn’t take many independent reporters to trigger the auto-hide.

While a Location is temporarily hidden:

  • The owner still sees the Location normally in their own library. The hide only affects what other people see.
  • The Location disappears from the public Map for everyone else immediately, without waiting for the moderator’s decision.
  • The Location is automatically restored if a moderator dismisses the reports as wrong or unfounded.
  • If a moderator agrees with the reports they’ll suspend the Location (or photo, or account) through the regular moderation actions described above; the temporary hide becomes permanent in that case.
  • The owner gets a push notification as soon as their Location is hidden (whether by the auto-hide or by an admin suspend). The notification just says the Location is under review — it doesn’t disclose who reported, what they reported, or how many.

The temporary hide is a circuit-breaker, not a punishment. The deliberate ambiguity of “many users” (vs. naming the exact threshold) keeps the trigger harder to game — a single bad-faith user can’t push a Location past it on their own. Repeated reports from the same person count as one.

Hiding Locations from your own browse

If you’d rather not see a particular spot on your map — without reporting it to anyone — long-press the public pin and pick Hide from my browse. The pin disappears from your map (the Conditions tab’s map) on every device you’re signed in on; the Location itself stays visible to other Viewpoint users.

Hiding is a per-user choice — it’s not a complaint, doesn’t notify the creator, and doesn’t influence what anyone else sees. It’s just your private way of saying “I’m not interested in this one.”

What we ask of you, the uploader

A short, plain-language set of rules for what you can publish:

  • Only your own photos. Don’t upload work that isn’t yours.
  • Real locations. Don’t deliberately publish a Location with wrong coordinates to mislead other scouts.
  • No personal targeting. Don’t name or coordinate-point at private individuals or homes.
  • No illegal content. Anything that’s illegal where it was taken or where Viewpoint operates isn’t allowed.

If you’re unsure about whether a photo or a Location fits, the safer bet is to keep it private.

What happens if a photo is flagged

If our scan flags a photo:

  • The photo doesn’t appear on the public Map for other users.
  • You see it normally in your own library, with a small badge indicating the rejection.
  • You can replace the photo from the Location’s detail screen.
  • We don’t share the rejection or your Location with anyone outside Viewpoint’s small operating team.

If you believe a flag was wrong, get in touch via support — we’ll review.

What happens with illegal content

Viewpoint is legally required to report certain categories of illegal content (notably child sexual abuse material) to the appropriate authorities, and does so via the relevant legal channels (e.g. the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline for US-hosted content) per applicable law.

To be precise about what is and isn’t automated here: the automated content classifier described above runs on every upload. Hash-matching against the industry-standard databases of known illegal material is a separate layer that requires an approved account with the organisations who hold those databases, and it is not running yet — that application is in progress. Until it is, illegal content is caught by the content classifier and by reports from people who see it, and acted on by a person. We would rather say that plainly than let you assume a check is happening that isn’t.

Accounts involved in uploading such content are suspended immediately and pending review. A suspended account can’t sign in or use the app until the review concludes; you’ll see an Account suspended message on every screen. Genuine appeals can be sent to support — we triage them as priority, but the suspension stays in effect during review.

This is non-negotiable. It applies regardless of intent — an accidental upload is treated the same as a deliberate one at the gate stage. The review step is where context lands.